EB: I would separate out NBA Geek and their articles from the methodology of WP. Outside the merit of WP is people’s adherence to WP. And regardless of what WP says about the value of rebounds it could obviously be modified to account for “junk rebounds” if we had a tally of those.

I would separate out NBA Geek and their articles from the methodology of WP. Outside the merit of WP is people’s adherence to WP. And regardless of what WP says about the value of rebounds it could obviously be modified to account for “junk rebounds” if we had a tally of those.

thenamestsam: t’s the NBA Geek that dramatically overreaches and comes to an absurd conclusion (absurd based on the lack of support for it – it may be right but it will be years before there will be any support for it) all in “defense” of a position that hasn’t even been attacked. They embarrass themselves with articles like that.

Eh, the NBA geek like the TownHall.com or World Net Daily of basketball analysis. It’s just an echo chamber for ideologues who are so far gone that they’ve formed an impenetrable bubble of basketball wingnuttery. Articles like that aren’t meant to convert, they’re preaching to the converted. Nor are their writers open to questioning their own orthodoxy.

thenamestsam: It’s the NBA Geek that dramatically overreaches and comes to an absurd conclusion (absurd based on the lack of support for it – it may be right but it will be years before there will be any support for it) all in “defense” of a position that hasn’t even been attacked. They embarrass themselves with articles like that.

Yeah, that article was definitely embarrassingly poorly thought out.

]]>By: thenamestsamhttp://KnickerBlogger.Net/playoff-odds-based-on-pre-season-predictions/#comment-446236
Thu, 19 Sep 2013 14:32:05 +0000http://KnickerBlogger.Net/?p=12128#comment-446236As for the SportsVu data the bottom line is that anyone trying to draw any conclusions from the information that’s out there now is doing so because they have an agenda. The factoid about Lopez and Evans is undeniably interesting but it just isn’t close to enough information to draw any conclusions. It’s going to take seasons worth of data and some serious analysis to come to any sorts of answers about this stuff.

The funny thing is that the NBA Geek article calls Schuhmann’s article “A textbook example of looking at the data and coming to the exact wrong conclusion about what it means.” Only Schumann never presents any conclusion at all other than “No single stat or number exists that’s going to tell you all you need to know about a player. Everything must be taken in context and the more information you have, the better argument you can make. Well, SportVU is a lot of information.” It’s the NBA Geek that dramatically overreaches and comes to an absurd conclusion (absurd based on the lack of support for it – it may be right but it will be years before there will be any support for it) all in “defense” of a position that hasn’t even been attacked. They embarrass themselves with articles like that.

Brian Cronin:
On an entirely other tangent, did y’all see that Chris Anderson got catfished? High-larious.

One of the most confusing stories I’ve ever read. So there was a woman pretending to be him and sending sexually explicit messages to a 2nd woman on the internet suggesting they meet up, etc. And at the same time the 1st woman was also pretending to be the 2nd woman and sending Birdman messages. Then he actually did meet up with that 2nd woman and have sex with her? And somehow they never realized that they hadn’t actually been talking to each other on the internet but had both been individually communicating with a 3rd party? How is that possible? Honestly one of the most convoluted schemes you could ever dream up.

Re: uncontested rebounds — that just means there was no one within “x” number of feet of the ball other than Evans — ie. everyone else ran away. Why should he get any credit for those? And lest we all forget, someone has already done this analysis on the Reggie Evans / Brook Lopez effect:

Now I have no doubt that Reggie’s a good rebounder, especially on the offensive end, where pretty much every rebound he gets is probably contested. But evidence is certainly mounting that he’s figured out how to game the system by attacking every single rebounding opportunity (and being good at it to boot) just as much as a volume scorer has figured out how to get $$ by shooting a lot.

DRed: There are many paths to the mountain top. Just because getting rebounds is good doesn’t mean you have to be good at rebounding. But if you’re bad at rebounding, you need to be better at other things.